Sam Smith's comeback: Breaking down the numbers

Sam Smith's comeback track Too Good At Goodbyes has made a flying start, looking set to claim the No.1 spot in the singles chart and has made a strong start across the board.

Here, Music Week breaks down the figures behind the headlines.

Released last Friday (September 8), the song has notched 27,900 sales so far, according to the latest Midweek Sales Flash from the Official Charts Company. That figure does not take into account data from Apple, Amazon or Spotify for Sunday September 10.

Smith is on course to at least match the performance of Taylor Swift's comeback single Look What You Made Me Do, which had sold 35,747 by the time of its first Midweek Sales Flash last month. This figure included an extra 24 hours worth of sales as the chart was published a day later than normal due to the August Bank Holiday.

Too Good At Goodbyes is the only Smith single in the Top 100 for the week so far, but his debut album, In The Lonely Hour, has shot up from 71-25, thanks to 1,138 sales this week. It has shifted 2,327,549 units since its release in May 2014.

Capitol Records president Nick Raphael describes Smith - whose biggest selling single is 2014’s Stay With Me, with 1,667,260 sales - as “a very special artist with an incredible and unique voice” in the latest edition of Music Week, and it seems the singer’s fans concur.

After racking up 215,970 views on YouTube in the hours following its release, the song’s official audio clip has now been watched 9,314,600 times. As of September 10, it had spent three days in pole position on iTunes' UK chart.

According to Spotify’s daily chart for September 10, Too Good At Goodbyes scored 3,631,437 global plays, which put it at No.3 in the platform’s Top 200 chart, behind Taylor Swift’s Look What You Made Me Do (3,779,609) and J Balvin & Willy William’s Mi Gente (3,740,600).

Taking into account UK figures alone, Smith’s new single leads the Top 200 with 397,017 plays. A total of 1,094,370 streams place it at No.3 in the American equivalent chart.

The track has already hit No.26 on the UK airplay chart. Click below to listen to Too Good At Goodbyes.